A tightrope walker moves along an imaginary line delineating the sidewalk tiles.

Timofei Radya is from the youngest generation of new Russian street artists, for whom taking risks in a repressive society is a normal part of artistic life. Nevertheless, both his small-scale and monumental works have often been accepted by public authorities as part of the urban landscape; for example, he and his group illicitly painted a large bridge in the heart of Ekaterinburg. Timofei graduated from the Ural State University, where he studied philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, history and theory of art. He studied contemporary art at the nonprofit Artpolitics School in Yekaterinburg. He works in mixed techiques, including sculpture, mural painting, ad-busting, performance.

Radya writes of his work, “In the phrase ‘street art’ it is street that important for me. I am convinced that the walls and streets of our cities are storing a huge energy. This is particularly felt when you travel, everything seems new and surprising. But this feeling of surprise may be found in a familiar house, street, city. It is we who can highlight it.

On the other hand, the streets and the city are empty. In the broadest sense. Anyway, this void flows inside the person. Crawls through the mouth, ears and eyes. I try to resist this. My intervention, political or poetic, made in different techniques, combined with one desire – to inspire a man and turn his everyday state.

The main interesting thing for me is relation between street art and public art. I can see some important things in public art like: accuracy, versatility, durability. I feel I need them in my street art works. In Russia we don’t have any of these, so I want to learn the whole working process.”